Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story

by Christopher Moore

What do you do when you’re a freshly made vampire with no guidance? You find yourself a roommate/boyfriend who can do things during the day like pick up your last paycheck and get your car out of the impound lot. The living situation isn’t so simple, though, because the roommate/boyfriend is also the night manager at the local grocery store. That kind of defeats the point of the arrangement. He, Tommy, is simultaneously fascinated and terrified by your condition and borrows every vampire book he can find from the library because he wants to test which of the myths are real and which are just made up.

These are some of the day to day (or night to night, rather) trials and tribulations for newly undead Jody. Most of these things are manageable, but she does run into a few problems here and there. First, there’s a creepy homeless guy who keeps following her around and second, the police start noticing a pattern with Jody and Tommy and a few dead bodies that are a little short on blood. The police don’t believe in vampires, though, and Tommy’s going to have some difficulty explaining why he stuffed his lifeless girlfriend in a freezer along with another dead homeless guy.

Not all of their problems revolve around avoiding the cops or creepy dudes who lurk in the shadows. Tommy and Jody also have everyday relationship issues as well. Maybe Tommy would rather date the new checkout girl at the supermarket. She does have the distinct advantage of being alive and having a less restrictive sleep schedule. And maybe Jody would prefer to find somebody who isn’t going to get all old and wrinkly in a few short decades. They’ll get around to sorting that stuff out, I’m sure, but in the mean time there’s work to be done. One of Tommy’s crew at the supermarket just smashed up the meat display case while skiing behind the floor waxer.

Gil's All Fright Diner

A vampire, a werewolf, and a rusty pickup truck make for an unlikely trio of heroes in A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All Fright Diner. On their way to nowhere in particular, Earl, a vampire, and Duke, a werewolf, stop for a sandwich at an off-the-beaten-path diner that may be serving up more than grilled cheese and fries. Their first clue that things might not be as quiet as they appear in dusty Rockwood is the minor zombie nuisance that interrupts their meal. Well, Duke’s meal, that is. Earl had a bite earlier. Loretta, the diner’s proprietor, doesn’t seem to be too upset by the zombies except for the fact that she’s counted 181 of them so far and the local cemetery only has about 100 plots. Duke and Earl decide they had better stick around to see what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Tammy, or Mistress Lilith as Chad (her lone minion in her sadly underpopulated cult) calls her, wants little more than to unleash a few thousand ancient and evil gods upon an unsuspecting world. Can Duke and Earl figure out who is behind all of the strange happenings in Rockwood before Tammy, er… Mistress Lilith, brings about the end of the world? Will Earl fall for the cute ghost who hangs out at the cemetery behind the diner? If the local general store doesn’t carry blue candles for your ritual, will white candles and some blue spray paint do the trick? And just what happened to ol’ Gil anyway? To find out, check it out from the library!

A Little Note About October

To get into the "spirit" of the month, we're going to be taking a look at a few books with supernatural themes. The LFHS library has quite a large collection of books about vampires, ghosts, and other creatures for you to check out and read.

Not all monsters are scary. Werewolves can be caring, vampires can be charming, and ghosts can be like family. But if you want to be scared, we certainly have those kinds of books, too.

So pull the covers up over your head and turn on the flashlight and get yourself ready for some spooky good times. And that noise coming from outside your door is probably just the cat. Probably.